The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent the work is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
Semiconductor memories are vulnerable to defects introduced by manufacturing process. Generally, a memory includes redundant memory elements. When a memory element is determined to be defective, one of the redundant memory elements is used to replace the defective memory element.